To Kill A Mockingbird Analysis

“It's right hard to say," she said. "Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks' talk at home it'd be out of place, wouldn't it? Now what if I talked white-folks' talk at church, and with my neighbors? They'd think I was puttin' on airs to beat Moses, "But Cal, you know better," I said. “It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike—in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do. It aggravates 'em. You're not gonna change

Harper Lee’s Novel To Kill a Mockingbird details the life of young Scout Finch and brother Jem Finch, who is growing up in a time of racial uniqueness. Jem and Scout Finch are what most would call a typical family growing up in the small Alabama town of Maycomb. They encounter many different obstacles during their childhood missions with many characters making the novel an interesting read. Throughout the book, Lee is showing Jem and Scout grow up and become mature young adults. This novel, written by Harper Lee, demonstrates the themes of growing up, Innocence and most importantly, racism.

As children, we often copy our parent's values and beliefs. In the novel ”To Kill a mockingbird” by Harper Lee the author demonstrates that parents pass down their ideals and values to their children through their actions . This leads to their children inheriting their character traits. In the novel, Atticus and Bob Ewell demonstrate their kind and abusive parenting style through their actions that influence the values and beliefs of their children.

Harper Lee shows us how broken or “fallen” the adult world really is in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The adults in the novel are responsible for their children and how they grow up, so they have to change to make a better future for them. Unfortunately, most of the adults in Lee’s novel continue on with their discriminatory and unruly behaviour and proceed to teach their children the same unjust and immoral ways of life they were taught. Lee feels that if adults continue to be closed-minded to new, better ways of life, to keep demonstrating racism and unfairness, and to keep teaching their children to have certain views for certain people such as women or “negroes”, then nothing is going to change and the new generation will be just as broken as the adults.

Mockingbird reflects the struggles and problems that the people in the 1900s had to go through on the daily basis. Problems that have to do with economic and social issues. People had to go through struggles related to the Great Depression and a lot of the black people in the 1900s had to experience racism everyday of their life. Not only did they experience it on the daily but there was also laws that they had to obey, and if they broke them there was consequences. To Kill a Mocking bird does a great job at showing the different situations people had to go through in that time and the time period the book was written in.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, was written in 1960’s based upon themes from 1930’s about racist and prejudice people. This relevant novel, despite its age still is associated with the English curriculum in contemporary Australian schools.

“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once” by Charles Lamb. This quote by Charles Lamb ties with the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, by explaining that everyone starts somewhere. Atticus, a lawyer and father of scout and her brother Jem, is an important part in their moral growth by teaching more against the way of the town, Maycomb. Along with Boo and Tom Robinson guided the children to the light, how Maycomb really is, messed up. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is coming of age morally as she begins snotty and blind of the town to empathetic and open-eyed.

Prejudice, an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed without knowledge, thought, or reasoning based off of people’s racial, social, religious or ethnic group. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, there were many different things that Jem and Scout learned about ways that their town is prejudice, and how it impacted the town as a whole. Scout wasn’t able to notice it as much as Jem because she was younger, so Jem tried to teach it to Scout, but it didn’t always work. Since this book was taking place in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression, there were more families that were affected than others with how they were living. Their father, Atticus, decided to take one of the toughest trials that Maycomb had ever seen, and that helped create more of a separation between the people over time. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, prejudice showed that it can separate groups of people within a town. This is shown through race, class, and gender.

The Influence of Setting on Themes and Events in To Kill A Mockingbird Vs. A Time to Kill

In “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee Atticus is a moral man because he shows courage by always doing the right thing when nobody is watching and he is always trying to set a good example for his kids and the town and to be kind to all living things. For Example when Atticus tells his children that they can shoot all the blue jays they want, but never To Kill a Mockingbird he does not elaborate which drove Scout to ask Ms.Maudie. She explains that, “Mockingbirds do not do one thing, but make music for us to enjoy, they do not eat up peoples gardens, do not nest in the corn cribs, they do not do one thing, but sing their hearts out, that is why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.”(93). Miss Maudie explains to Scout that mockingbirds are innocent.

When Dill, their new friend from Meridian, and Jem start to exclude Scout from their activities, Scout begins to spend more time with Miss Maudie. She serves as a gossip supplier to Scout about a variety of topics correlating with the events of Maycomb. Scout gets her first factual information from Miss Maudie about a recurring question about why Boo Radley never comes out. Miss Maudie finally decides to tell her that “Mr. Radley was a foot-washing Baptist [...] Foot-washers believe anything that’s pleasure is a sin” (59). She even tells her that one of the Radleys went to the extreme to tell her she is going to Hell for spending “too much time in God’s outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading the Bible” (59). Miss Maudie helps develops Scout’s sympathy and a new perspective of Boo Radley because it is not entirely Boo’s fault for being concealed from society. She teaches Scout not to judge and listen to rumors that circulate in her neighborhood because it is one of the reasons why the town is very stereotypical. After Miss Maudie explains why Boo is the way he is, she also clarifies why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. She said, “Mockingbirds don’t eat up people’s gardens, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us”

The novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” (TKM) was a multi award winning novel, this book is about a family that lives in a small town called Maycomb, Alabama. This family observes a lot of racism, since this novel is based off the great depression. the narrator, which is the main character scout, shows her perspective of Maycomb and her family, She looks highly up to her father, Atticus Finch, He was a very wise and loving father towards his children, he is a lawyer that can think with, Pathos, Logos and Ethos, which made him a good lawyer. In Maycomb, since it was the south, it was wrong to defend black person, it was bad to even be friends with a black person, but Atticus Finch was a open minded man, he defended a black man that was accused of sexual harassment.

One of the most pivotal and revolutionary literary works in the American classroom has stemmed from the 20th century and continues to influence the youth in modern times—Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Though the infamous novel exemplifies within it themes of race relations and justice, the overall elements that depict Southern society during this era are core factors in labeling this novel as “controversial.” Controversial enough that in his article, “If To Kill a Mockingbird’ makes you squirm, good!” Leonard Pitts utilizes the three Aristotle proofs to criticize the act of using discomfort as a ploy to disregard racism; he executes this by his use of indignant satire and several references to crucial events in the past and occurring history that were fueled by prejudice, bigotry, and ethnocentrism.

To Kill a Mockingbird was written in a time of racial inequality in the United States. To Kill a Mockingbird is told in the perspective of a young girl named Scout, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, who is naïve and innocent. Scout matures throughout the novel through her father, Atticus, and she becomes more aware of the prejudice in Maycomb County. When Atticus loses his case, Scout and her brother, Jem, learn that blacks cannot have a fair trial, but their new found maturity has taught them not assume someone’s character without knowing them first, such as with Boo Radley. Scout says, “‘…Atticus, he was real nice…’” (Lee 376), Atticus replied, “‘most people are, when you finally see them.’” (Lee 376). Lee uses ties with nature to symbolize not only racial issues, but other major themes such as loss of innocence. She uses things in nature such as flowers and animals to subtlety reveal major themes of the novel.

The story, in the eyes of two innocent children Scout and her brother Jem, of the discrimination and hypocrisy throughout the town. Maycomb County, Alabama, faces an African American’s injustice while the children learn valuable lessons from their father, Atticus and their housemaid Calpurnia, during the Great Depression. All the while, we are learning from it. To Kill a Mockingbird teaches us the lessons of morale, justice and equality.